


Fight Aloneside You

by unDerWorldreamer



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Cancer, Death, Drug Use, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sick Sherlock, anguish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2018-09-24 09:17:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 7,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9714878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unDerWorldreamer/pseuds/unDerWorldreamer
Summary: Sherlock gets cancer and Mycroft stays with him till the end.





	1. A Script to End

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [在你身边孤军奋战](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/264650) by 黑咖啡与小提琴. 



> You could also see the original work on: http://221-coffee-violin.lofter.com
> 
> Comments and kudos are very welcomed. Hope you enjoy:)

Mycroft:  
All lives end.  
All hearts are broken.  
Caring is not an advantage.  
But:  
Memory won't fade.  
Broken hearts will heal.  
Love is not a disadvantage. 

 

Sherlock opened his eyes. No need to observe or deduce he was well aware of the place; the white sheet, the clean and tidy furnishing, the subtle smell of blood almost diluted by disinfectant, and the bizarre numbness all over him—caused by morphine, which he was long familiar with. But right now he needed to think and this stuff would make him groggy. He attempted to reach for the control button, failed. He let himself drift off.

Awaking again, he felt the mattress a bit sagged, the sheet marked by sitting even had been pulled straight. He tried to sit up—did it, and eyes were met with the umbrella prick on the floor. Others weren’t likely to notice, but he knew how to observe the dust. You can put back anything, but dust—dust was eloquent. Mycroft was here. Sherlock wondered how he’d startled the British Government out of his chair, but then he was upset about being unable to deduce the time that his brother came. Though he was reluctant to admit, Mycroft was always one step ahead of him.

When the chubby figure entered the room, Sherlock ridiculed his weight and receding hairline , and then asked to be discharched. Mycroft kept silent, acquired a chair form the corner and sat down, face to face with Sherlock. He doesn’t sit on my bed, thank god, or the bed would cry, Sherlock thought.

“Stabbed twice, one bullet, barely scratched the spleen and just two broken ribs, so I don’t need to sit in this boring place to rot,” god knows how he wished he had a violin so that he could torture Mycroft's ears.

“There’s more.”

Sherlock fell silent, roaming over the entire room. Then he turned to his solemn-faced brother, “How long? I’m assuming metastasis.”

“One year or more.”

“How long did the doctor say?”

“…Six months.”

He interrupted his brother, “Not that long. I know my body.” Sherlock shut his mouth judiciously at Mycroft's gloomy face.

“Sherl…Sherlock,” Mycroft rubbed his cheek, altering his expression. Thank god he didn’t call me that; Sherlock had thanked whom he didn’t even believe in for the second time today.

Without poundering, he knew what Mycroft was thinking. “No need. He thinks I’m long dead.”

“I am not able to be here all the time, Sherlock. You need company.”

“I know. I just don’t need someone come nagging all day,” he waves it off, irritated.

Mycroft sighed heavily, taking a look back, “Moran’s dead. Dr Watson is safe.”

Sherlock fell back in bed, closing his weary eyes, thinking whether to thank God for the third time.


	2. A Hand When You Stumble

“He has agreed to undergo chemotherapy.” 

Mycroft sat in his office, receiving the report from Anthea, clenching and letting go of the chair arms repeatedly. Unsure of why, he had somehow replaced all soft leather armchairs with wooden ones. 

Last week, he had interfered with a clinical research on oncology as the British government. He allocated large amounts of funds and finally received the commitment of clinical trial in three months. Stuck with mountains of paperwork as a result, he could only keep an eye on his brother through surveillance and reports.

The wall clock said it was past midnight. Mycroft stood and limbered up his sore joints. Hearing the email reminder of the computer, he fell back in the chair with a moan, one hand rubbing his temple, the other reaching into the drawer for a book.

With his memory ever exceeding Sherlock’s, no book was needed to be read twice, no book except that one, whose leaves flipped like blossom.

On the cover it said _Psychology of Dying_.

Another book lay beneath, brand new, which he’d been reluctant to read— _Hospice Care_.

 

Sherlock hated it here. He resented the white walls, the lingering smell of disinfectant, the chill fluid dripping into his veins and the raging agony. He had to choose between morphine or pain, choose which to debilitate his mind. He hated this meaningless choice.

He had attempted to get out of here. First time he was stopped by a nurse when ripping out his IV drip; second time was caught by the camera facing him in the corridor; third time frustrated by his split incision and had to text Mycroft for help. When his brother’s arms wrapped around him and helped him up, Sherlock didn’t bother to think about the British Government’s 30-second arrival, instead leaning all of his weight onto Mycroft’s shoulder. Mycroft was rather good at this, supporting Sherlock’s body; with the caution to least irritate his incision. Sherlock disliked showing weakness in front of Mycroft, but was unable to refuse the rather comforting support that alleviated the twinge in his abdomen.

Anthea arrived five minutes later with Sherlock’s violin and laptop. Sherlock intended to bring Mr Bones along, but he was at John’s place—John had moved out of 221B.

When asked if he was willing to help with a governmental case, Sherlock did not refuse. “I’ll text you when I’m bored,” he said, as the doctor tended to his surgery sites. Mycroft gave him a smile, more like a wrinkled nose, and walked out of the room. Sherlock noticed Mycroft’s trusty black umbrella was left behind.


	3. To Hold Your Hand in the Fall

How many rounds of chemo had he been through? Didn’t remember—deleted. He wouldn’t occupy his hard drive with such useless information. Besides, memories of chemo were never any pleasant. Had he been here for over a month? Yes, a month and one day. He hadn’t deleted that.

He could no longer stand through a complete tune in front of the window with his injuries and debility. The violin felt a lot heavier that his left hand shook within a few bars; then was a slight tremor in his right hand, and then the stiffening of his fingers pressing on the strings. The violin required full cathexis. One minor flaw would ruin the entire melody. And then there he was, messing up with the _Devil’s Trill_ , torturing his own ears. The attempt with the _Chaconne_ also failed. He could still play _Auld Lang Syne_ , unknowing to whom. Then he simply played the etude Mycroft had first taught him, twice, and paused during the second time, silently suspending the bow, gazing at the reflected setting sun for long enough. He found himself—he was unable to describe the feeling—something more than irritated, not unsettled, nor fear. It felt completely different than the hound. He felt that thought he wouldn’t fear death, there was something encircling him, staring at him, as if he was trapped in the fog of London, aware that nothing could hurt him, but unable to move. He sighed at the feeling of being stared at. “Being stared at,” he finally came to the right phrase, but not a befitting one.

He put down the bow, took two steps and the picked it up, whipping at the mattress on his bed. Hearing the weakness in the beating sound, he exhaled deeply.

Fortunately or not, he was unable to get “stared at” again, and the lingering pain from the past few days took hold of him. In that second Sherlock made a favourable decision to crash forward into the bed instead of backward.

His mind was spinning n absolute chaos, mind palace wavering under thump after thump, vision blurred by a thin and thick grey mist. He shifted forward, but failed to fall into bed, instead slipping from the edge of the bed onto the floor. His sensations exploded in agony. The mist thickened into darkness, enwinding him. He couldn’t tell whether he was swearing or screaming, or choked in silence. His pale fingers subconsciously contorted with spasm, grasping the sheet. Unsure of himself kneeling or sitting on the floor, he let go of the sheet as strength drained away from his trembling arms, and collapsed onto the floor.

Radom footsteps crashed through the door. Someone crouched vefore him, and then turned to his back, hands going under his armpits. He felt the cool but tender cloth brushing his face. his brain, trudging through agony, took long enough to tell him that he was lift into the bed. He curled up into the tightest ball he could manage so that he felt slightly better.

Something cold vaguely streamed through his veins, and quenched the burning agony inside of him. As consciousness rapidly drained away, the last thing he remembered was his shuddering shoulders in a firm grasp.

Sherlock opened his eyes, maybe after a long while, as the excruciating pain was temporarily soothed by morphine, and saw Mycroft sitting at his bed. The moist in his eyes blurred his brother’s face, hatefully. Mycroft was contorted into a somewhat funny posture, probably to sit as close as possible to Sherlock and to be able to watch him.

“Are you feeling better, Sherlock?” Mycroft’s voice was deep and gloomy, as if coming from beneath the ground. Sherlock thought for a moment whether it was the morphine. Convincing that it was not, he closed his eyes and croaked, “Alive again.” He must have cried out. Damn.

Morphine, along with the weariness tugged at his eyes, urging them to fall shut. Before drifting off, he felt a soft pillow tucked under his neck, a blanket carefully pulled up to his shoulders. When a hand gently push away the sweaty curls, Sherlock wobbled his head, subconsciously feeling the hand on his forehead, then his shoulder, and then leave.

Mycroft’s voice echoed in his ears, “Sleep tight, brother mine.”

 

Sunlight woke him by caressing his lashes. The frame of the window casted light yellow rhombic grids onto the floor. Sherlock opened his eyes in the harmonious warmth. He didn’t delete yesterday. There was only a few months left and he refused to spend them with fragments of memory.

The hospital staff weren’t so stupid. In fact they seldom bothered him if not necessary. At first he thought his incompliance had scared the doctors off, but then he realized he was the only patient in the hospital—if so it was called. It’s reasonable since he’d “committed suicide” over a years ago and didn’t have any sort of ID. Fortunately he had a brother as the British Government.

Everything in his mind palace remained firm, as they’d never been shaken. He deleted something about astronomy, then _Devil’s Trill_ with hesitation. The sun was warm. it was quiet outside, boring. He quickly recited all equations of oxidation reactions, thenπ, stopping at the 430 th decimal place, sitting up from bed with a look at the violin left by Mycroft on the nightstand.

Aware of his inability of completing a marvelous tune, Sherlock held the violin without getting out of bed, plucking the chord with his bow and fingers, making a string of sombre moans. Then he made a 5-minute long absurdly piercing noise, followed by a few coherent bars which lasted less than 30 seconds before cut off by a low buzz. Then a depressed bleat put the chord struggle in his hand, making tedious grumbles which didn’t belong to the violin. The sound lasted 3 minutes, and after a few meaningless notes, the white room fell back onto silence.

He texted Mycroft. _Boring. SH_

An email came in 10 minutes later. Mycroft appreciated hiss help for the government, with an odd manner in the words, probably for fear of wounding his pride. Sherlock whispered a “thank you” to the camera in the corner, and clicked download.

He was expecting a lengthy and boring cipher to pass the time, but instead Mycroft sent a murder. The brain that had been idle for over a month was reactivated, and running through the mind palace once again pumped adrenaline into his frail veins.


	4. Nightmare into Hovering Notes

A pleasant day failed to bring pleasant sleep. 

At midnight, Sherlock was shocked brutally out of his sleep by a sudden wave of pain. Crawling out of the dark cold moor, still surrounded in darkness, without sleep, he tossed around for an hour before drifting. 

The garden of childhood, the familiar grass, when he was only a little boy with messy curls, Redbeard shook his tail at him, barking in delight. 

But it wasn’t night. He was long dead. Wasn’t he? 

Everything around him twisted away the moment he perceived it. He saw himself standing on Bart’s rooftop, three bullets phasing through his only three friends in the world, Moriarty staring at him with the dark hole in the back of his head, which expanded the next second, swirling rapidly, colors flowing out coming together and forming a way too familiar face – his own face. He flustered backwards, struggling to ignore the nausea surging in his throat. Approaching the edge, the ground disappeared beneath his feet. Then came the agravity of the fall and the wind howling in his ears, but no pain of hitting the ground. The moment he touched the ground, he seemed to be pushed out of the wrecked body, standing astray watching all this. The corpse in the pool of bloodred was not him, but Mycroft. 

The day was bright when he awoke. The last scene of Mycroft’s dilated pupils lingered. He blinked hard, remembering that fresh nightmare of Baskville, in which the fright of his drugged mind seeing the hound filled his dream with fury barks and severed limbs. 

But this time, except for fear, he for the first time so realistically felt the cloak of Death, the nausea from in the dream pressed at his throat, making it hard to breathe. 

He missed the warm fireplace in Baker Street, the black coffee with two sugars, the three nicotine patches, the adventures narrated by his blogger. He remembered running through the streets of London and jumping between rooftops, incredibly addicted to the adrenaline pumping through his veins. 

He sat up in bed, wrapping himself in the sheet that had been kicked off during the sleep, and took out the phone and clicked into messages. 

He clicked on John Waston. 

 _I hope you can come._  

Delete. 

 _I’m alive._  

Delete. 

 _I’m not dead. Mycroft got me into witness protection. We may not see each other again. SH_  

His finger suspended above the little arrow, then shifted towards the upper left corner of the screen and clicked. 

Looking at the blank screen, he froze at the reflection of his face. The curls that used to stand unsettled on his forehead were sparse due to chemo and drooped compliantly over. This reminded him of himself at the old-day crime scene, pouring out a barrage of deductions leaving the crowd dumbfounded. 

Mycroft had told him a story when he was a child, of how a prodigal little girl who walked on bread fell into the moor and into hell. He never believed the existence of “hell”, but now, sitting on the edge of the bed, fingers fiddling the tresses on the pillow, he imagined death. If there weren’t hell or heaven, devil or angel, when breathing stops, heart stops, brain dead, what comes afterwards? He was unable to imagine. Once again he felt sorry for losing hair. Was there a kind of hair-friendly chemo that Mycroft could’ve chosen for him? 

He texted Mycroft before lunch, complaining about the unprecedented damage done to his appearance. A wig was sent for him soon after, almost the same style as his own before. He held it, tossing and catching, malaxating it like dough, but did not put it on.


	5. Shoulder to Shoulder, Aloneside You

Anthea laid a stack of file onto Mycroft’s desk, and reported in a low voice, “Advanced equipment can significantly increase the success rate of the surgery, but they need consent from the patient.”

Mycroft raised his head from the heap of documents, sounding plain but weary, “Noted. I’ll go talk to him.”

 

When Mycroft entered the room, Sherlock was sitting on the bed with legs folded, hands clasped into a pyramid under his chin. Interrupted by the footsteps, Sherlock fell back into bed, cocooning himself with the sheet. His voice came timidly through the cloth, “Brother dear, your lovely brother is resting. Please say afternoon with the manner of a gentleman and leave the room.”

“Fine, my ‘lovely’ brother. How have you been feeling these days? ” Mycroft felt unsettled for what he was about to say.

Just as he finished the sentence, Sherlock stripped off the sheet and sprawled all over the bed.

“Do you have something to tell me? No, don’t say it. Give me 30 seconds.”

Mycroft was rather gratified by the vigor that his brother shows. He even wondered whether this was thanks to the last surgery, but all the statistics told him that Sherlock had less than 3 months. Fretfully he lowered his head, meeting those flawless green-blueish eyes beyond words, like some sort of glass, that remind him of that little boy from many years ago treading on his heels and the little fist grasping his fingers. It was too late when he realized Sherlock’s eyes scanning him. Sherlock must have deduced enough from his ruminating expression.

Unsurprisingly, Sherlock turned over in bed, reburying himself into the sheet, “Use your brain, Mycroft. My last surgery was a week ago!”

The expected refusal did not disappoint Mycroft. Instead he was relieved not to have to ask. Sherlock lay on his side, back facing Mycroft and speaking at the astonishing speed, “I’m not in the mood of teasing your hairline when your weight has conspicuously DECREASED over the last month, or torturing my violin, so let’s skip to the end of this conversation. Remember to close the door as you leave.”

“The most advanced medical equipment,” Mycroft hesitated and sat down on the bed, leaning over Sherlock, whom turned his back again, “I don’t care.”

“Perhaps you think you’re nonchalant enough in the face of…” He paused at the word. “But I think you’re somewhat depressed.”

“Depressed? Come on, Mycroft Holmes, brother dear!” The cocoon turned to glare and snap at him. “I’m the one going through chemo. I’m the one who’s losing hair. I’m also the one tumbling in this bed and sleeping on morphine! And yet I’m still here talking normally with you, which means I am positive, optimistic and vigorous enough!”

Mycroft’s stomach clenched at each of the heated word. He thought of the five stages of grief in Death psychology: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. He himself was probably stuck at the stage of denial, apparently not as accepting as his brother of the current situation. He gave up on the manner of language, “Sherlock, you cannot let go of it like this. This is cruel for me.”

“So?” Sherlock threw out a word, the indifference in which set off the concern and exhaustion of Mycroft in over a month. Anger burned up. “You’re too selfish, Sherlock.”

Mycroft realized how faulty it was to say just as he said it. Sherlock stared at him quietly and then tucked his head back into the sheet. “My dear control freak brother, you sent people stalking me, bribed my flat mate to surveil me, installed a number of cameras in Baker Street, and now you’re trying to decide on my life or death. We both can see who’s the selfish one here.”

Mycroft fell silence, for he knew this would end up the other way around, but he was not ready to give up. “Sherlock, if you consent to the surgery, I’ll give you more intriguing cases.”

Irritated words came from beneath the sheet, “Save your brain.”

Mycroft’s heart elevated, but he bit the bullet all the same. “They are all cases which they cannot solve. You—”

“I’m not stupid,” the coverlet interrupted. “Five cases in all. Two of them were CREATED by you.”

Mycroft gave up on the persuading, helplessly poking the floor with the black umbrella in hand. “I do not wish to see you’re bored.”

“You could give me interesting cases, but you are afraid that I may go wrong.” Sherlock kicked the sheet off a bit, revealing his sharp cheeks and pursed lips.

Mycroft cursed at his blunted brain, lacking the chance to figure out the reason of him not being himself, as Sherlock launched the next line of attack.

“There’s an indentation near the right wrist on the sleeve of your suit, on the backside of your arm rather than the inside. You weren’t doing paper work. You were reading. It takes 10 minutes from your office but the mark is conspicuous. You kept that posture for a long time meaning you stared at the same page for that long. For as I know no book can be so interesting or difficult for the British Government, so you were thinking and unusually holding the book, so you were thinking about the book. Then there’s the green ink under your left thumb, a mark of a highlighter. You’re right-handed so you put your hand on the book, but the colour couldn’t have gotten on it if your hand were dry. You sweated not because of heat but because of how long you stayed not moving. You not only stared at that page for long, but continued thinking with your hand on the book and even highlighted some bits. You were agitated by your emotions for this book and failed to notice the green on your hand. The content of the book is obvious since you drove here to persuade me immediately afterwards. What’s unreasonable though is how you’re unaffected by that bit you clearly have just highlighted.”

“It was unnecessary to illustrate the process of your deduction. I do not need an explanation. ” Mycroft was somewhat puzzled by his brother’s torrent of words.

“Yes, totally unnecessary. If you were my flatmate, I might be able to get a ‘That’s amazing.’” Sherlock squeezed out a wrinkled smirk. “Just to remind you that I’m not stupid yet.”

Sherlock pulled a book from underneath his pillow, pushing it towards Mycroft— _Psychology of Dying_.

Mycroft took it and found a folded page, on which two lines were underlined in black: five stages of grief. He sighed, “Sherlock, how utterly meaningless for everything you said to prove that you have accepted this.” To tell the truth it was unexpected that his little brother didn’t start a fight. He’s been prepared for it and getting kicked out since Sherlock pointed out the real reason why he didn’t get the cases.

“You preparing a mountain of words to get my consent for the surgery and planning to tell John as a threat, is meaningless too. We both know that you can’t threaten me.” Sherlock gave an inflated sad look. “Seriously, Mycroft, if I were you I wouldn’t make these cases up for my brother. They aroused no appreciation from me, let alone free me of this boring chair. They brought me less excitement than a 7% solution did.”

“Have you relapsed?” stunned by the word “seven percent”, Mycroft sprang to his feet, drilling his eyes into the indifferent ones, as if transferring all the anger and shock of his own onto Sherlock.

“Not yet.”

Mycroft was slightly relieved at the “Not”, but everything implied by “yet” only helped with his anger. Sherlock adds fuel, “My brain cells left idle may just be used to fight against the arch-enemy.”

“I’m worried about you, but you do not take your health seriously.”

“Correct,” Sherlock let out the impatience in his voice.

Mycroft remembered many years ago, when his overdosed and dying brother lay in that antiseptic-smelled hospital bed, face as white as a sheet, lips an even more palpitating ashy grey. Without that coat around his tall and slender body, he looked so fragile. Standing at the same bed again, Mycroft can still remember the helplessness he’d felt then, watching the cancer impair his little brother bit by bit. On sleepless nights through the monitor he watched Sherlock withering with pain, but could do nothing but send someone with the most effective yet least addictive painkillers. Being the British Government meant that he would never be able to fight alongside Sherlock and through those cold statistics he’d known that the battle would end up with the knight eaten by the dragon. Bravely Sherlock had been fighting but all alone he was doomed to be.

Mycroft could think no longer. The destined end that’d taken his brother 3 seconds to accept took him 3 months or longer to bear alone.

He’d told Sherlock that caring was not an advantage, but he himself had never thought for one second to abandon the disadvantage.

The silence of the room stranded his throat, the lingering smell of disinfectant like impalpable needles pricking at his eyes. Mycroft said a hurried goodbye and left the room.

Sherlock couldn’t bring to cheer that he’d driven Mycroft out as usual. He kept going over the way Mycroft looked before leaving the room: screwed brows, anxiety; pursed lips, disappointment, depression; dilated pupils, anger, fear. What else? Fists unnaturally folding, helplessness, files unintentionally held covering lower abdomen, protection and self-protection; nose flapping, sorrow.

The footsteps silenced outside the door. Sherlock heard Mycroft leaning onto the wall, the dropping of the file, and his suppressed sobbing and unsteady breathing.

Sherlock wasn’t proud to make the British Government cry, because by doing so he made his brother cry. 

“I’m sorry,” the words slipped right out. 

Hearing the sound of the file being picked up, he added almost inaudibly, “Brother mine.”


	6. Silent Bliss

Sherlock woke up in the dark. His phone said it was past midnight, so he went into the mind palace and tore one page from the calendar placed there just a few days ago, taking a glimpse of that large number: 25 December. 

He let himself in a daze, in bed for a few minutes, and then moved towards the window wrapped in the sheet, throwing himself into a couch there. He stared at the violin against the other end of the couch, hand subconsciously pressing down on the imaginary chords, but never actually reaching for the instrument. 

The wind glided carrying tiny crystals, shaking the outlined shadow of trees outside the window, with the subtle cracks of occasionally snapped dead twigs. Sherlock closed his eyes, listening to the gentle musical sound, chest heaving with his fingers tapping. The night flew in through the window, brushing over the light grey shade under his eyes. He wrapped himself in the night, curling up in the couch facing inward, like one of those days in Baker Street. 

 

He awoke again in over half an hour. The wind had stopped, but the twigs were still cracking. He sat up leaning against the couch watching the still saturated night. The snow rustled falling off the bent branches. The sky was not yet clear, with only a few dim star hanging about to fall in the endless dark. This might be all the “Christmas” feel he could get. 

Christmas meant a convivial holiday for most people, but Mycroft wasn’t “most people”. Thinking of the empty chair at every family dinner, Sherlock fretfully picked up his phone, typing up the text on the screen, hard.

Seeing as you’re still striving for the Queen today, I’m disturbed by your hairline.

Then he stared at the flashing cursor, frowning at the unchanging childishness in the words, frustrated, and then deleted them. As he closed messages, the phone suddenly vibrated — new message.

Arch-ememy: I’ll see it as a Christmas wish.

Sherlock reflexively turned to look at the back of the couch. His phone vibrated again. 

Arch-enemy: No, I did not install another camera. It is the one on the ceiling – the one you failed to uninstall the day before yesterday. It is of high definition. 

Sherlock evaluated the time of sending, unbelievingly tapping on the screen with audible clatters in the silent room.

What app did you use to type this fast? The latest voice recognition misspells too much. Seriously, did they invent some personal app for you?

Arch-enemy: It’s just me typing, brother dear. You are convinced that you could type faster than I do?

But I convince I’m in better shape than you. Sherlock deleted the unsent message, typed in this one as fast as he could. 

Arch-enemy: That skin and bones of yours is hardly any good shape. 

There’s nothing wrong with being thin. Still less I do have muscles. 

Arch-enemy: So that time in Buckingham Palace you were showing off you muscles?

Piss off!

Arch-enemy: Foul language does not suit the manner a Holmes ought to possess

Arch-enemy: See you then. There is a new code to be deciphered with reasonable difficulty. Enjoy.

In the afternoon, Sherlock drifted off in the drowsiness from morphine and didn’t arouse until almost midnight. The slightest snoring failed to escape his ears. Looking up, he saw Mycroft crouching in the sofa, head slouching a bit, chest heaving rhythmically with his breath. Stirred by his brother’s noise, he jerked his head at him.

“Sherlock?”

Sherlock stayed quiet for a few seconds, before saying the word that he’d seldom said, “Brother,” he paused, embarrassed, “would you walk me around for a bit?”

Mycroft stood up for the sofa, flipping his messy hair, “All right.”

The lawn and bushes were covered in snow, reflecting a milky yellow under the lamp light. The cold crystals seemed unexpectedly warm in such a color. Mycroft wandered around pushing the wheelchair, the wheels grinding against the snow screeching. Sherlock sat serenely, the outline of the side of his face no longer sharp but clean and tender. The blue scarf from Baker Street draped over his chest, dangling lightly with Mycroft’s pace. 

“Stop.”

Mycroft stopped, looking down at him.

“Close your eyes,” Sherlock raised his head, eyes shot straight into Mycroft’s.

Mycroft did what he was told. A moment later, a loose ball of snow hit his face, freezing water seeping into his shirt. Startled, he wiped away the snow from his eyes, and frowned, “You’re not wearing gloves, Sherlock.”

“Neither are you,” Sherlock fumbled for a handful of snow on the ground, his scarf sweeping a shallow trail in the snow. 

“Just this once,” Mycroft thought of the loose, forceless feeling of the hit of that snowball. Sherlock no longer had the strength to squeeze a snowball.

Another came flying. He noticed the small tremor in Sherlock’s hand when he threw it, and shifted aside, unnoticeably onto the track of the ball. The next second, the snow dissolved on his chest, soaking the dark cloth. He leaned over, brushing the shining snow flakes off his brother’s scarf.


	7. The Dragon Preys the Knight, the Final Curtain Call

The moment Mycroft glanced at the monitor, he noticed something wrong. He immediately called the surveillance team but there was no answer.

“Get your people to the hospital as soon as possible,” he called Anthea, running to the car park, suppressing the quiver in his voice, heart racing with agitation. The image on the monitor was factitiously replaced and he had yet lost track of Sherlock’s location. He drove like a monster toward the hospital, pushing the gas almost to the bottom.

Sherlock managed to hack the monitor with false images. Checking his phone he set an alarm for 15 minutes. 

He reached behind the pillow for a small bottle, sucking the clear liquid into a syringe.

Two days ago, his conditions deteriorated rapidly, followed by not only physical agony but the chaos of the mind, which was more excruciating than anything else, and he felt like an obsolete machine. If not, he would’ve never gone to the drugs.

His brain used to work at unimaginable speed that he indulged himself in whatever fascinating world of drugs, to keep that engine from over-burn. Now he was doing the same, but only to get it running again. 

Looking down at the bottle in hand, the syringe almost full. He left it that way, though just a tiny bit would be enough. A fraction of the shift of the piston would be adding lube to the rusted brain of his.

Hesitantly, he pricked the needle into the vein in his arm. The cold solution streamed into his blood. Something inside of him boiled with ecstasy, the Mind Palace unwinding in front if him, spectacular as in the old days.

It was all going for the best, so the pain exploded with no cue, like a sudden blow to the head. Everything he saw was no longer real, his mind palace collapsing in a few seconds’ time. He heard the clattering of the gears as his brain went rigid, endless roars of hysteria screaming in his ears, meaningless sentences flying around. His right hand tightened into a fist, and bashed against his temple. Pain brought by the collision was nothing compared to what he was already going through.

Stop—

His shaking fingers took hold of the piston, the needle still in his arm. Blood began to ooze from the pinhole.

Unaware of what he was doing, he grasped the piston and pressed hard.

It was pushed to the bottom.

The instant stream of fluid. Blanked his brain. The next second he came to realize what he’d done. Overwhelmed by bewilderment he attempted to reach for help, but conscious left him just as he grabbed the phone, and so did balance. He dropped to the floor.

His phone helplessly beeped, and then fell silent.

Mycroft ran as fast as he could, his heart almost beating out of his throat. Even so when he cracked open the locked door, his heart stopped.

“Sherlock!”

He jumped into the room, dropping to his brother’s side, and checked his pulse and pupils, subconsciously recalling the procedure of CPR, “Breathe, Sherlock!”

He sprung to his feet as the doctors came rushing in, giving out the symptoms sounding abnormally calm except for stumbling over the words “constricted pupils”.

The doctors are busy with the resuscitation which he knew he was unable to help with. He retrieved the umbrella he’d left at the head of the bed, walked out of the room, and sat down on the chair in the corridor.

Listening to the noise of the chaos from the room, he deduced what was happening inside, and yet felt unreasonably bewildered. Why did Sherlock do this? It only took a simple deduction to get the answer, but even so he refused to believe what he’d seen. The surveillance team sent away by Sherlock came back rushing in, and he waved them off.


	8. Dark Clouds Saying Bond to Lose

Sherlock opened his eyes. The noise of a shift of the chair came from the other end of the room. He effortfully tilted his head to see Mycroft holding a glass of water with a straw passed to his lips. Expected reproach did not come and he didn't bother to ask or provoke Mycroft at this point.

Laying down the glass, Mycroft squatted beside the bed, eyes level with Sherlock’s, startling him.when was the last time he’d faced his brother up this close? He couldn't remember. Only then Mycroft had been somewhat slender with a lower hairline, and he’d called him Mycroft, not Mikie from childhood nor the latter “arch-enemy”.

“Tell me, Sherlock,” his brother’s voice had never been so earnest. “You weren't attempting to relapse, were you?”

“Of course not.”

“Then you might be fortunate,” Mycroft thought over the words. “The amount you took was non-addictive. It’s just that you’ve been clean for years and have lost the resistance.”

“I thought not. That shot wasn't much of a thrill anyway,” Sherlock flinched, not used to being so physically close to Mycroft. The latter cleared his throat, speaking even more earnestly than before.

“I’m very sorry, Sherlock. I should have been here for you.”

Is he apologizing? Sherlock was unusually dumbfounded. Hearing Mycroft’s “this is my fault”, he felt like he had to say sth, despite the fact that a Holmes apologizing, especially Mycroft Holmes himself saying it, was an all-time spectacle.

“I wasn't trying to kill myself.”

Mycroft sprung to his feet at those words, nearly knocking over the chair, but the silence followed. For a long time neither of them spoke. Then Mycroft’s phone went off. He took it, throwing a querying look at Sherlock. The latter turned over in bed and buried his face into the pillow, “I’ll go to sleep for a bit.”

 

Mycroft pushed through the door of the doctor’s office. Sherlock’s attending sat at his desk with a stack of file. Anthea sat in the chair beside, siting straight instead of usually typing on her iPhone.

He knew that the time came, when all the results of the tests failed.

Re-entering the room, Mycroft found Sherlock resting against three pillows staring at him. Not planning to hide anything, Mycroft came straight to the point, “Do you want data, or the answer?”

“The answer.”

“Hematogenous metastasis.”

Sherlock turned his head away, and then back after a few seconds, wearing a indifferent look on his face, “Have you got a moment?”


	9. Stumbling Over The Thorn

“Open your eyes,” Mycroft patted Sherlock in the shoulder. They were both sitting on the bed, face to face like when building their Mind Palaces as children.

Sherlock quickly gave out a string of number.

“Your memory is okay. Saying your mind palace went wrong, what do you mean by that?”

“The rooms are unchanged, but the corridors are blocked. It’s too slow going from one to another,” Sherlock raised his hand, slowly drawing out a waving line in the air.

The rhythmic tapping on the edge of the bed stopped. Mycroft had long expected that cancer would do tremendous damage to the extraordinary brain of his brother’s, and was well aware that it would be irreversible.

“Till which day?”

“January 29.”

“Eight days then.”

“Eight days, yes,” the repeat was subconscious.

“The doctors are good?”

“Best in Britain.”

“So accurately predicted.”

“Perhaps.”  
The two of them had long abandoned this sort of meaningless conversations. Except for fights and arguments, their dialogues were usually brief and to the point, but right now, neither of them wished to come to the next subject.

The chitchat lasted about 10 minutes, before Sherlock hit the point, “It’s only going to get worse.”

Mycroft knew what his brother was trying to say，“Euthanasia is not legal yet.”

“You can make it legal by all means, and I wasn’t planning on euthanasia. Can it be ‘living will’?”

Mycroft fell silent. If it were him, he would also want to go with dignity, rather than dying in pain with a tube down his throat.

The sudden heaviness on the air began to suffocate both of them. Sherlock kept his head low, pricking at the sheet, “They’re not here, and I get bored sometimes, but I don’t want them mourning again.”

Mycroft reached for a laptop from the desk beside the window, tapped at the keyboard and turned the screen towards Sherlock. Four windows were playing low-quality footages with no sound.

“Authority abuse,” Sherlock glared at his brother.

“I will uninstall them.”

“Not until the thirty-first of January,” realizing it was an inappropriate joke, Sherlock turned his focus to the screen.

Dr Watson was firing off charts in the clinic, saying something to the patient sitting aside, describing symptoms by the movement of his lips.

Mrs Hudson was bustling about in her kitchen, hands clammy with flour.

Lestrade was fretting about a stack of cases, his coffee giving off streams of vapor.

The living room of 221B was nothing but silence. Nobody else moved in, and everything was in the way he’d left them. The frame is frozen, only the timeline jumping.

He fixed his stare on those little windows, not looking away even when asking Mycroft, “If you were dying, would you want someone to be there for you?”

“I would like to have family or friends around, if I had any, but I do not wish to see them grieve.”

“It’s quite conflicting,” Sherlock flipped his hair—he’d eventually put on that wig.

“I know, but death itself is conflicting. No one gets to know what will face them until they die,” Mycroft remembered how they talked about death when they were children, but those talking sense seemed hollow now in the face of it.

“Or nothing.”

“There may not be another funeral this time.” The subject was quickly changed.

“Then I want the real me under that tombstone in London Cemetery,” Sherlock was still gazing into the screen, or emptiness. “I’ve seen a two-year-old corpse before, utterly disgusting. I don’t want to become that.”

“Cremation then?” Mycroft lowered his head in an attempt to catch Sherlock’s eyes.

“Cremation,” Sherlock finally moved his glued eyes away from the screen, and turned to take a piece of paper folded in a neat square from underneath the pillow. Mycroft unfolded and read it, sighed, and put it down. He laid his hand on Sherlock’s and squeezed it.

“Sure?”

“Sure,” Sherlock didn’t re tract his hand from his brother’s.

Again there was the ever-lasting silence. Sherlock slammed shut the laptop with his free hand. Mycroft let go of his hand, stood up to set the laptop aside, and pulled down the window blinds. The light in the room dimmed.

Sherlock threw a look at the laptop, and then turned to Mycroft, “My ‘control-freak’ brother.”

“Yes?” Mycroft’s lips quirked into a tiny smile, but it vanished in a blink.

“I want that case.”


	10. Story be read backwards, so the end sets you free

“Terminate life support.”

“Sir, this would…”

“Terminate all life support.”

Mycroft held a rumpled piece of paper hand written by Sherlock, with a signature and a fingerprint at the bottom.

I do not accept any form of pain, no ventilation, no tube feeding. When I go into an irreversible coma or a vegetable state, please terminate all life support. Thank you.

The writing was no longer flying as usual, while the scribbling signature was still somewhat Sherlock.

“Sir, I don’t think you understand…”

The doctor was still insisting. Anthea had come to take care of this. Mycroft flopped into a chair aside, taking unsteady breaths. In a few minutes or more, when the doctor consents, it would be the time to say goodbye.

He couldn't sense the time passing. When Anthea called him he walked into the room without a word.

Sherlock lay in the bed, his face peaceful but paler than usual. Soon he would stop breathing, his heart would stop, and the last stream of warmth would leave his body.

Mycroft looked at his brother, at those beautiful eyes even when they were closed.

Nowadays in the news, “Suicide of The Consulting Detective” was all a hype. People argued for whom they believed as “the biggest fraud of the century” or “the slandered genius detective”, but the Holmes brothers paid no attention to all that, for they both knew that time would wash away everything. Long long after, people won’t even remember that there existed such a genius.

But Mycroft wouldn’t. Even when those eyes were closed, they were profound as the ocean, bright as the stars. The light that never once left those eyes, never will leave.

Those sombre but proud eyes refusing to wear the wig.

Those serene eyes watching snow on Christmas Eve.

Those eyes that he’d failed to see or thought to see the moment he looked away from the critical notice.

Those calm and determined eyes holding that living will against life support in the face of death.

Those sparkling eyes saying “I want that case.”

“Goodbye, brother mine. Maybe I’ll see you again,” Mycroft whispered as if to himself.

Turning to leave the room, he wore the usual indifference on his face. There were a lot to be handled.

Taking up the Psychology of Death beside Sherlock’s bed, he found a piece of note left in it.

I think I will soon find out what happens after death. You don’t know yet, do you? Hope that’s finally a problem you only get to solve decades later than I do. Goodbye, brother dear. SH

Mycroft put down the note, calmly moved the stuff from the bed to the table, and sat down on the bed. Eyes on that wig beside the pillow, the self he’d been holding since, broke into pieces. He leaned towards his knees, head buried low, one hand pressed against his forehead and the other grasping the wig, dark tresses wind around his fingers. Tears he’d been reluctant to shed ever since saying the words “terminate life support”, finally rolled out from his screwed-shut eyes, down along the quivering hair tresses, and then onto the floor.

 

Midnight.

Mycroft walked through the cemetery alone, and stopped at the gloss black tombstone. He laid the two boxes that he was carrying onto the ground, and took out a folded shovel from his backpack.

It rained just yesterday, so he managed to reveal the empty hearse without much effort. He prised open the lid of the coffin, and then carefully placed the caskets in. In the white one was Sherlock’s favorite violin, while on the corner on the black one carved: SH

He re-nailed the coffin, put back the soil, and then took out a set of chisels. He crouched before the stone, beginning to carve letter by letter.

It was the epitaph Sherlock had written for himself:

Shall I fail to deduce the day to come, it is not that I lack the intelligence. SH

Afterword: Shall I fail to accept the day to come, it is not that I lack the indifference. —Mycroft

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, comments and kudos are very appreciated! Thank you:)


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